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Retirement. Publishers, thank you for the many years of reading pleasure you gave me, but all good things must come to an end. Due to failing eyesight I am forced to retire. I can no longer review your books, and any that you send will be donated to the local library, unread. Do not send any more. I can only read for a couple hours every day, and this does not allow me to finish a book in reasonable time. I will be devoting time to my own books from now on, and reading on a personal level. Books that interest me. I prefer paperbacks and hardbacks, not eBooks. My eyesight has been failing the last few years, and I cannot handle hundreds of review books any more. My books are still available for review. Anyone interested in reviewing any of them, they are found in the Link to Tom’s Books On Amazon. Contact me for pdf copies at fadingshadows40@gmail.com

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

I typed the incorrect spelling of Boricua in the previous heading, and wish to correct that typo. When searching for the book, it is "Boricua Brat", not Baricua Brat", my apology to the author. The corrected Review is posted below.

“So the soldiers went overseas, accompanied by their families, cars, barbecues, cats, and dogs. We were the kids that went with the package.” The Author

This novel is a wonderful chronicle of a young dependent growing up as a military brat. And for someone facing a brand new language, there was even more difficulties. That he succeeded successfully is evidence of his determination. From Puerto Rico to New Jersey, and finally to southwestern France, the author grew up in a Dorm at Poitiers, four hour’s drive from his parents, who were stationed at St. Nazaire. The Army bussed the Dorm kids home on weekends to spend a few days with their parents every Friday, but from Sunday night until Friday afternoon, their home was a small room shared with three other boys in a two-story building. Boys were in one wing, the girls in the other, both had Dorm supervisors to keep order. Some of the lucky few were living in homes off Post with their parents, if they happened to be stationed near the school. At Poitiers, the High School was located in a compound named Camp de Chalon, which also consisted of a military hospital, and a 9-hole golf course and athletic field.

I was an Army MP at Poitiers and had occasion to interact with students and teachers, and constantly marveled at the young men and ladies who attended school while I was there. The reader will be fascinated by their way of life as they read through the author’s reminiscences of his four years of Dorm life, and the lifelong friendships he gained. Those four years shaped his future, and left a lasting memory of everyone he met. His broken heart, when he lost his first love, will make you sad. You will also feel his emptiness when friends departed before him. And you’ll smile and laugh at the mischievous antics he and his pals got into.

This book is highly recommended for all military brats and their families, regardless of when or where they went to school, or branch of service.Well written, and nicely told, it was a fun read!

“So the soldiers went overseas, accompanied by their families, cars, barbecues, cats, and dogs. We were the kids that went with the package.” The Author

This novel is a wonderful chronicle of a young dependent growing up as a military dependent. And for someone facing a brand new language, there was even more difficulties. That he succeeded successfully is evidence of his determination. From Puerto Rico to New Jersey, and finally to southwestern France, the author grew up in a Dorm at Poitiers, four hour’s drive from his parents, who were stationed at St. Nazaire. The Army bussed the Dorm kids home on weekends to spend a few days with their parents every Friday, but from Sunday night until Friday afternoon, their home was a small room shared with three other boys in a two-story building. Boys were in one wing, the girls in the other, both had Dorm supervisors to keep order. Some of the lucky few were living in homes off Post with their parents, if they happened to be stationed near the school. At Poitiers, the High School was located in a compound named Camp de Chalon, which also consisted of a military hospital, and a 9-hole golf course and athletic field.

I was an Army MP at Poitiers and had occasion to interact with students and teachers, and constantly marveled at the young men and ladies who attended school while I was there. The reader will be fascinated by their way of life as they read through the author’s reminiscences of his four years of Dorm life, and the lifelong friendships he gained. Those four years shaped his future, and left a lasting memory of everyone he met. His broken heart, when he lost his first love, will make you sad. You will also feel his emptiness when friends departed before him. And you’ll smile and laugh at the mischievous antics he and his pals got into.

This book is highly recommended for all military brats and their families, regardless of when or where they went to school, or branch of service.Well written, and nicely told, it was a fun read!

Thursday, June 16, 2011

After what has been a relatively short but incredibly encouraging journey, Hatchet Force Journal #1 is almost ready to land on Amazon's Kindle bookstore. All the material is in hand, layout is mostly complete, and I hope to have the final editing finished by this weekend. My hope is that the Journal will go on sale Monday morning.

Monday, June 6, 2011

PULP ECHOES presents seven new stories in the pulp tradition, both new and original characters: The Bat returns in “Blind As A Bat,” The Crimson Clown returns in “The Crimson Clown – Killer,” and Nibs Holloway battles Dr. Death in “Till Death Do Us Part.” The Black Ghost is back in “Carnival of Death,” Captain Anthony Adventure in “Terror In The North Country,” The Black Cat in “A Cat Among Dogs,” and Senora Scorpion in “Senora Scorpion.”

Sunday, June 5, 2011

FADING SHADOWS was a small press publishing house that began in June 1982 with the publication of ECHOES, the hobby magazine for the pulp enthusiast. The magazine lasted for 100 issues before becoming a newsletter, finally ceasing in December 2004. However, in June 1995, FADING SHADOWS branched out to fiction magazines with the first issue of CLASSIC PULP FICTION STORIES. That first issue contained a number of stories written in the pulp tradition, from a Vietnam War story to the start of a science fiction serial. Also in the first issue were new stories of Ki-Gor, Doc Harker, Bill Barnes, and the Phantom Detective. In coming issues, there were more of the same, though the characters still under copyright were quickly dropped. But the writers continued to send in new adventures of the Black Bat, Phantom Detective, Doctor Death, and even a Jim Hatfield western by James Reasoner.

Soon it became apparent that one magazine could not contain all of the stories coming in to FADING SHADOWS, so more titles were quickly added: WEIRD STORIES for the weird menace genre, STARTLING SCIENCE STORIES for the science fiction (title later changed to ALIEN WORLDS), DETECTIVE MYSTERY STORIES for the detective mystery fans, EXCITING UFO STORIES for the UFO crowd, and DOUBLE DANGER TALES for the new hero stories. There was no shortage in writers and artists, only in subscriptions.

In the beginning, there were only a few established authors. James Reasoner, Will Murray, Clayton and Patricia Matthews, and maybe one or two others. But many of the new writers that got their start with FADING SHADOWS went on to become established writers in their own right. Although FADING SHADOWS was not able to pay for their stories, they sharpened their writing skills while turning out great yarns for the genre magazines, and are now writing novels for paying markets. One writer that would have made it big passed away much too young. Sean Danowski was something of a creative genius, and could write any genre. He stood almost seven foot tall, and had to use a cane to walk, and was barely thirty years old when he died of a rare cancer. Sean created several new hero characters in the mold of The Shadow and Secret Agent X, but he preferred the title CLASSIC PULP FICTION STORIES over that of DOUBLE DANGER TALES, and wanted most of his stories in CPFS. Before he became too ill to sit up, Sean was putting his own weird menace book together, which he was writing and designing. Unfortunately, he never had the chance to finish it.

Other writers did become discouraged. Not because they were not being paid. They understood that ECHOES was paying the bill for printing the magazines, and FADING SHADOWS was not making any profit. What discouraged most of them was the lack of recognition. Not only couldn’t the magazines bring in subscriptions, it was impossible to get letters of comment from readers.

To get a general idea of how many words were published in these genre magazines, each issue contained approximately 40,000 words. There were 91 issues of CLASSIC PULP FICTION STORIES, 32 issues of STARTLING SCIENCE STORIES, 39 issues of ALIEN WORLDS, 55 issues of DETECTIVE MYSTERY STORIES, 63 issues of DOUBLE DANGER TALES, 26 issues of WEIRD STORIES, and 6 issues of EXCITING UFO STORIES, for a total of 312 issues. You do the math. That adds up to a lot of words for a small press publishing house.

Publishing on a monthly schedule made it impossible to get special art for each issue. Although there were probably a dozen artists contributing to the genre magazines, by the time a story came in, there wasn’t time to ask a specific artist to do something special for that story, so artists were asked to send generic art, i.e., a science fiction, a detective, or a general piece, or just a flying saucer or cowboy illustration, and when there was a story that sort of matched, that’s where the art went. And artists and writers were all treated the same. There were no favorites played. The only reason the same author might appear in six straight issues was because that author got his stories in on time. But even then, attention was given to each issue, and what authors and art was on hand, and what artist or author should be next.

There were problems. The magazines were a two-person operation, Tom and Ginger Johnson, both sharing in typing stories to format. The early years were done on manual typewriters, and then word processors, until finally, Ginger was using a computer. Most authors sent their manuscript in double-spaced, and each story had to be retyped to format dimensions. There was no time for a proofreader, and one was desperately needed, as typos appeared in every issue, if not every story! The magazines were amateurish at best, but the stories and art were top notch.

In a way, FADING SHADOWS paved the way. Genre magazines like ours closed out the last century and started the new century before ceasing publication. In March of 2002, Tom had a stroke, which limited his workload, and Ginger was not able to take on more of the responsibility, so it was decided to plan on stopping the magazines. ECHOES was now a newsletter, and not bringing in enough money to support the genre magazines anyway, so one at a time, the titles folded, until they were all gone by December of 2004.

Some day I would like to compile an index to the authors and stories that were published under the FADING SHADOWS imprint, but that would be a massive task, and I’m not sure I am up to it. However, all of the data is available at http://www.geocities.com/fadingshadows1/index.html At least the authors and titles are available. The cover and interior art is not listed.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Here is a shot of our fireplace mantle. The vases on the left are Korean replicas from the Koryo Dynasty (11C- 13C). These will surely bring our home good luck in our life. Thanks to Jae and my Korean friends from Vietnam! My wife loves them, by the way!

Friday, June 3, 2011

Our radio friend here in Seymour has added The Shadow, The Whistler, Boston
Blackie, and The Saint to his weekly radio shows. To see the schedule,go herehttp://theiotrs.com/ The times listed are Central (Texas time). There are
buttons at the top for anyone to listen to the programs. One of my old
favorites, Johnny Dollar, is a weekly feature too.

One of the first fanzines I ever read was Fred Cook’s BRONZE SHADOWS (Bronze for Doc Savage and Shadows for our hero, The Shadow), which ran for 15 issues, beginning with an undated Issue #1. Issue #2 was dated December 1965. Issue #15 was dated November 1968. Except for Issue #1, which was only a couple of pages of introduction, most of the succeeding issues were around 20 pages each. Printed for the most part on a mimeograph machine and pages stapled together, then folded and mailed without an envelope, it cost something like 35 cents an issue, and worth ten times that price!

Except for Doc Savage and The Shadow, there wasn’t much known about the other pulp heroes at the time. BRONZE SHADOWS set out to correct that lack of knowledge, even though the fanzine was a Doc Savage and Shadow hobby magazine. Nick Carr quickly started writing about G-8 and Operator #5, Bud Overn started writing about Bill Barnes, and soon there were other articles on some of the other great pulp heroes. Herman S. McGregor began his “A Critical Analysis of The Doc Savage Magazine”, which, to my knowledge, was never completed. Robert “Bob” Kenneth Jones started his research into ADVENTURE. He completed it later in ECHOES, and then it was published in book form. Nick Carr’s own research went on to be published in several books: “America’s Secret Service Ace” (a study of Operator #5), “The Flying Spy” (G-8), “The Other Detective Pulp Heroes”, as well as “The Pulp Hero”, and others.

However, about this time, one of the first questions that intrigued all of us was in issue #8, dated January 1967. A letter from Robert Joseph asks: “Did you ever hear of a pulp series character by the name of Moon Man? I know it sounds unsophisticated even by the standards of the 30s and 40s. From what I can remember, he appeared in one of the detective pulps. He was supposed to wear a special helmet that made his head invisible. Any information that you can dig up would be appreciated.”
Fred Cook answers him: “Good Gravy! A man with no head? Sorry, Bob, I can’t place him, but I’m sure Gerry de la Rae, Dick Myers, Bernie Wermers, Lynn Hickman or some of the other collectors can pin him down for you. How about it – you pulp detectives?”

In Issue #10, dated June 1967, Jack Irwin responded with: “In response to Robert Joseph’s query about the Moon Man: The Moon Man stories appeared in TEN DETECTIVE ACES and were written by Frederick C. Davis. I don’t know the extent of the life of the series, but I have several issues between January 1935 and September 1936 that contain Moon Man stories. TEN DETECTIVE ACES was published monthly at this time but the Moon Man did not appear on a regular monthly basis. For instance, he didn’t make an appearance in the February 1936 or October 1936 issues. Incidentally, the Moon Man’s special glass helmet did not make his head invisible in the sense that it became transparent. Instead the helmet was one-way, in that the Moon Man could see out of the helmet, but none could see into it. So then, this was the reason that his head was not visible when he wore the helmet. The shape of the helmet together with its color gave rise to the name “Moon Man”, since his helmet resembled a full moon. The rest of the Moon Man’s costume consisted of a long black robe.
“The Moon Man, like many of the costumed characters of the pulps, worked outside the law and therefore was considered a criminal and hunted by the police. In reality, he was Detective Sergeant Stephen Thatcher, and was the son of the Chief of Police. In addition his fiancée was the daughter of a Detective Lieutenant. How’s that for connections for a criminal?”

Fred Cook answers with: “Thank you for passing this information on to Bob in particular and the rest of us in general. It certainly is fascinating to trace down some of the answers to the questions that pop up. Let’s keep it up and get all the answers that we can.”

Well, by the time BRONZE SHADOWS folded, all of the questions may not have been answered, but a good many of them had been. We eventually learned that Frederick C. Davis not only wrote the Moon Man short stories in TEN DETECTIVE ACES, he also wrote the Mark Hazzard and Ravenwood short stories over at SECRET AGENT X. The Hazzard series lasted for six issues, from 1935 to 1936, and Ravenwood for five issues in 1936. Plus, he wrote the first twenty novels in the Operator #5 series as Curtis Steele. Frederick C. Davis was a professional writer, even though most of his stories were shorts. It was rumored that he dictated his stories to a secretary, some times more than one story at a time. His Operator #5 novels were undoubtedly top notch, and the best in the series. He shared the byline with Emile C. Tepperman and Wayne Rogers. But it’s probably his short story series of the Moon Man that fans remember today, thanks in large part to BRONZE SHADOWS and the question written in by Robert Joseph back in 1967.

TEN DETECTIVE ACES: When Ace bought out DETECTIVE DRAGNET around 1932-33, they changed the title to TEN DETECTIVE ACES, and the new title ran for 161 issues, ending in October 1949. The title boasted ten stories per issue, or a cent a story, and most of the stories were series, or continuing characters by the same authors month after month. A typical early issue might consist of authors like Paul Chadwick, Emile C. Tepperman, Lester Dent, Norvel Page, and Frederick C. Davis. Many of these same authors went on to write the full-length hero novels in other series. Paul Chadwick went on to write Secret Agent X and Captain Hazzard, Emile C. Tepperman went on to write The Spider, Operator #5, and Secret Agent X. Norvel Page went on to write The Spider. Lester Dent went on to write Doc Savage, and Frederick C. Davis went on to write Operator #5.

There were 38 Moon Man stories, from May-June 1933 (“The Sinister Sphere”) to January 1937 (“Blackjack Jury”). All of these stories have been collected into two hardbacks. “The Night Nemesis”, The Complete Adventures of The Moon Man – Volume One, edited by Garyn G. Roberts and Gary Hoppenstand was published by The Purple Prose Press, Bowling Green, Ohio (no date of publication listed in my copy), and “The Silver Spectre”, The Complete Adventures of The Moon Man – Volume Two. Compiled and edited by Robert Weinberg, The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2004. Also with commentary by Garyn G. Roberts and Gary Hoppenstand, and an Introduction by Will Murray. The character basically robbed from the bad guys and gave to the poor, like Robin Hood of legend. Later, Captain Satan would carry the plot to a series of five novels, although his band of men often kept a percentage of the take. Not so the Moon Man. Through his aide, Ned “Angel” Dargan, the money would be distributed to those who were in most need. The act of charity gave the character of the Moon Man his reason to exist. The reading public had just gone through a long Depression. Not only were they looking for a hero, they were looking for their very own Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest, and Frederick C. Davis’s Moon Man character filled this bill perfectly.

As it was, it had been the Great Depression that brought on the pulp hero. For over ten years the pulps were dominated by gangster stories. Mobs, gun molls, and the Machine-gun Kelly’s were the reader’s fare. And readers were tired of the gangsters, real or imagined, and wanted to read about good winning out over evil. In 1931, The Shadow began over at Street & Smith, written by Walter B. Gibson under the Maxwell Grant house name. Shortly after that, The Phantom Detective appeared over at Standard. Soon, we had pulp heroes popping up at all of the pulp houses: Doc Savage in 1933 at Street & Smith. The Spider and G-8 at Popular, etcetera. So it wasn’t surprising to see pulp heroes over at Ace in 1933, even if they were short story series. In 1934, Ace would have Secret Agent X, and by 1935 The Moon Man and a dozen other short story characters were going strong at TEN DETECTIVE ACES.